My inner control freak loves bonsai! It’s nature, in a tiny, perfectly-designed form. Over a long weekend in Oregon, I lucked into an exhibit of American bonsai by Ryan Neil at the Portland Japanese Garden. It was charming and beautifully staged in origami-like frames. What I learned is that American…

Much of my time over the past year has been spent in the company of Red Hat, the open source software company. The organization is rooted in the ideals of the open source movement: collaboration, innovation, and generosity. Their brand team is doing some fun stuff to bring what they call the Red Hat Way…

On my recent trip to Taiwan and Tokyo, the cute factor was inescapable. Buildings, restaurants, museums, you name it. Everything has a mascot. Everything has an animated character. And the queen herself, Hello Kitty, continues to reign supreme. But of course Hello Kitty is more than a mere character. She’s a phenomenon…

As Mad Men winds down, we find our beloved anti-hero, Don Draper, losing his agency. Over ten years in television time we’ve watched him pull rabbit after rabbit out of his fedora to stay ahead of mergers and takeovers. (Not to mention contracts.) Despite a last-ditch effort, this time there…

Over the past year I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with the sustainability team at Autodesk to envision their support for the design-led revolution. Haven’t heard of it? You may not know the DLR moniker, but you’ve seen revolutionary design in action. From affordable prosthetics to solar robotics, high-impact solutions are…

Friends and colleagues often ask about the work I do, and how they can help me find what I am looking for. Never one to miss an opportunity to draw a diagram, I created this handy Venn. The green zone is my ideal – a strategic branding role in a…

It seems everyone is talking about purpose these days. Imperative has a new take on what purpose means in your career — it’s not the cause you work for, but how you work. Curious to see what surprises it might reveal, I took Imperative’s purpose driver quiz. My results: …

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